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of intercession, supplication and weeping will mingle in its ascent to heaven with the shouts of battle and the shock of arms.

My brethren, I cannot but imagine that the virtuous heroes, legislators and patriots of every age and country are bending from their elevated seats to witness this contest, incapable, till it be brought to a favourable issue, of enjoying their eternal repose.

Enjoy that repose, illustrious immortals; your mantle fell when you ascended; and thousands, inflamed with your spirit, and impatient to tread in your steps, are ready to swear by Him that sitteth on the throne and liveth for ever and ever, that they will protect freedom in her last asylum, and never desert that cause which you sustained by your labours and cemented with your blood.

XXVI.

Moral Desolation.-N. E. REVIEW.

WAR may stride over the land with the crushing step of a giant. Pestilence may steal over it like an invisible curse-reaching its victims silently and unseen-unpeopling here a village and there a city, until every dwelling is a sepulchre. Famine may brood over it with a long and weary visitation, until the sky itself is brazen, and the beautiful greenness gives place to a parched desert-a wide waste of unproductive desolation. But these are only physical evils. The wild flower will bloom in peace on the field of battle and above the crushed skeleton. The destroying angel of the pestilence

will retire when his errand is done, and the nation will again breathe freely. And the barrenness of famine will cease at last-the cloud will be prodigal of its hoarded rain-and the wilderness will blossom.

But for moral desolation there is no reviving spring. Let the moral and republican principles of our country be abandoned our representatives bow in unconditional obsequiousness to individual dictation-let impudence and intrigue and corruption triumph over honesty and intellect, and our liberties and strength will depart for ever. Of these there can be no resuscitation. The "abomination of desolation" will be fixed and perpetual; and as the mighty fabric of our glory totters into ruins, the nations of the earth will mock us in our overthrow, like the powers of darkness, when the throned one of Babylon became even as themselves-and the "glory of the Chaldee's excellency" had gone down.

XXVII.

On the Transportation and Distribution of the Mail on Sunday.*-R. M. JOHNSON.

FROM the earliest period of time, religious teachers have attained great ascendency over the minds of the people; and in every nation, an

* From the celebrated report of the Postoffice Committee of the House of Representatives in Congress (of which colonel Johnson was chairman) on the petitions and remonstrances of numerous individuals who were adverse to the transportation and opening of the mail on Sunday. Made 5th of May 1830.

cient or modern, whether Pagan, Mohammedan or Christian, have succeeded in the incorporation of their religious tenets with the political institutions of their country. The Persian idols, the German oracles, the Roman auguries, and the modern priesthood of Europe, have all, in their turn, been the subjects of popular adulation, and the agents of political deception. Religious zeal enlists the strongest prejudices of the human mind; and, when misdirected, excites the worst passions of our nature, under the delusive pretext of doing God service. Nothing so infuriates the heart to deeds of rapine and blood; nothing is so incessant in its toils; so persevering in its determinations; so appalling in its course; or so dangerous in its consequences. The equality of rights secured by the constitution, may bid defiance to mere political tyrants; but the robe of sanctity too often glitters to deceive. The constitution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred as that of the Christian; and gives no more authority to adopt a measure affecting the conscience of a solitary individual, than that of a whole community. If congress shall declare the first day of the week holy, it will not convince the Jew nor the Sabbatarian. It will dissatisfy both, and consequently convince neither. Human power may extort vain sacrifices; but Deity alone can command the affections of the heart. It must be recollected that, in the earliest settlement of this country, the spirit of persecution which drove the pilgrims from their native home, was brought with them to their new habitations; and that some Christians were scourged, and others put to death, for no other

crime than dissenting from the dogmas of their rulers.

It was with a kiss that Judas betrayed his divine master; and no matter what our faith may be, the rights of conscience cannot be so successfully assailed as under the pretext of holiness. The Christian religion made its way into the world in opposition to all human governments. Banishment, tortures and death were inflicted in vain to stop its progress. But many of its professors, as soon as clothed with political power, lost the meek spirit which their creed inculcated, and began to inflict on other religions, and on dissenting sects of their own religion, persecutions more aggravated than those which their own apostles had endured. The ten persecutions of Pagan emperors were exceeded in atrocity by the massacres and murders perpetrated by Christian hands; and in vain shall we examine the records of imperial tyranny for an engine of cruelty equal to the holy inquisition. Every religious sect, however meek in its origin, commenced the work of persecution as soon as it acquired political power.

The framers of the constitution recognised the eternal principle, that man's relations with his God are above human legislation, and his rights of conscience unalienable. Reasoning was not necessary to establish, this truth: we are conscious of it in our own bosoms. It is this consciousness which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained so many martyrs in tortures and in flame. They felt that their duty to God was superior to human enactment, and that man could exercise no authority over their consciences: it is an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate. The bigot, in the pride of his

authority, may lose sight of it: but strip him of his power; prescribe a faith to him which his conscience rejects; threaten him in turn with the dungeon and the fagot; and the spirit which God has implanted in him, rises up in rebellion and defies you. Did the primitive Christians ask that government should recognise and observe their religious institutions? All they asked was toleration; all they complained of was persecution. What did the Protestants of Germany, and the Huguenots of France, ask of their Catholic superiors? Toleration. What do the persecuted Catholics of Ireland ask of their oppressors? Toleration.

Do not all men in this country enjoy every religious right which martyrs and saints ever asked? Whence, then, the voice of complaint? Who is it, that, in the full enjoyment of every principle which human laws can secure, wishes to wrest a portion of these principles from his neighbour? Do the petitioners allege that they cannot conscientiously participate in the profits of the mail contracts and postoffices because the mail is carried on Sunday? Do they complain that men, less conscientious in relation to the Sabbath, obtain advantages over them by receiving their letters, and attending to their contents? If these be their motives, then it is worldly gain which stimulates to action, and not virtue or religion. But if their motive be to induce congress to sanction by law their religious opinions and observances, then their efforts are to be resisted, as in their tendency fatal both to religious and political freedom.

Why have the petitioners confined their prayer to the mails? Why have they not requested that the government be required to sus

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